There’s obviously some kind of holdup or delay regarding the 4G LTE deployment over at Sprint. The carrier now has four top of the line Android devices on its network being sold every day to customers that are being told that the 4G part of that fancy new phone will be here “soon”.

Sprint has refused to give any kind of go-live date for their network deployment, and aside from their network deployment strategy there’s not much else to know. Still, every day I get to my office, turn on my Sprint 4G LTE device, and wait patiently as it connects to Sprint’s 3G network instead of giving me what I want. It’s not like that everywhere, though. Apparently if you live in Wichita, KS with a Sprint 4G LTE phone you will occasionally connect to LTE.

As we know from Sprint, their 4G LTE network is still undergoing extensive testing and calibration. After years of WiMax, Sprint wants this LTE r9 network deployment to be a smashing success, and wants to use that success to push them through the upgrade to LTE r10. In order to do this, the network deployment must be flawless. If Sprint suffers from some of the same CDMA to LTE handoffs that Verizon Wireless did in their early days of LTE, the results would likely be disastrous.

So, Sprint’s not giving a release date. What they are doing, is using the fine people of Wichita is guinea pigs as they put the final touches on the test towers that have been deployed there.

Over the last week, several Wichita residents have noticed that their Samsung Galaxy S3 or their Samsung Galaxy Nexus will occasionally read “4G” in the network display. Since neither of these devices have a WiMax radio in them, the only 4G that could be received by those devices would be LTE. According to one Wichita resident, the network is inconsistent and his device doesn’t stay connected for more than an hour before going back to 3G. On Google+, one user was able to grab a speed test while connected to the LTE network, to see what the speeds and performance was like during his brief stay on the network.

During an exclusive speed test that was performed by PC Mag’s Sascha Segan, we’ve seen what the Sprint 4G LTE r9 network is supposed to do under “ideal circumstances”. Sascha’s tests were done on what was basically an empty network, and his results showed a consistent download speed of over 10Mb with a companion upload around 2Mb. The speed tests shown on Google+ revealed a connection that was more like 6Mb down and 4Mb up. Obviously those tests aren’t under ideal conditions, and it is unlikely that the network in Wichita is what Sprint would call “production ready”, but it does paint a clearer picture.

Sprint’s 4G LTE network is going to be here any day now, we know that much for sure. There’s still no clear timetable as to when we can expect Sprint to officially announce the big day, but with any luck we’re only a few short days or weeks away from Sprint users joining in the fourth G.

For a more complete explanation of the difference between LTE r9 and r10, check out Extremetech’s “What is LTE?“